Bruce Dodd, Huntington Beach; third year volunteer: “I've been pulling fish out of the ocean for darn near 70 years, and I just like putting them back.” TAYLOR HILL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Sherman Lim, San Gabriel Valley; fourth year volunteer: “The people that volunteer here are so helpful. I've been fishing for over 40 years, and watched the seabass fishery be depleted. The white seabass has a mystique to it. Everybody wants to catch it, and it looks like our efforts are really having a positive effect on the fishery, which makes it easy to want to help out.” TAYLOR HILL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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John Groenhof, Huntington Beach; first year volunteer: “The angling community does more for fisheries than just about anybody else, and it's good to come down and be a part of that.” TAYLOR HILL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

More than a dozen volunteers came down on March 29 to help transfer 5,800 juvenile white seabass to fish pens moored in Newport Harbor.

"I've been pulling fish out of the ocean for darn near 70 years, and I just like putting them back."

Bruce Dodd, Huntington Beach; third-year volunteer

"The people that volunteer here are so helpful. I've been fishing for over 40 years, and watched the seabass fishery be depleted. The white seabass has a mystique to it. Everybody wants to catch it, and it looks like our efforts are really having a positive effect on the fishery, which makes it easy to want to help out."

Sherman Lim, San Gabriel Valley; fourth-year volunteer

"The angling community does more for fisheries than just about anybody else, and it's good to come down and be a part of that."

John Groenhof, Huntington Beach; first-year volunteer

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Beginning each spring, fishing buddies Ryan Griffin, 28, and Jock Albright, 62, take a few boat trips out to hot spots around Santa Catalina Island to try to nab as many white seabass as possible. The sport fish, which can grow upward of 60 pounds, is highly sought after by Southern California's recreational anglers and is known for its elusive nature and good flavor.

But Griffin and Albright aren't out fishing for dinner or bragging rights; they're fishing to grow fish.

The two Newport Beach natives grew up fishing Orange County's offshore waters, seeing firsthand what both overfishing and rehabilitation efforts can do to a fishery.

“I've spent a lot of time catching white seabass, but for my grandpa, he sees them as almost a marvel because they were so overfished for so many years,” Griffin said.

Commercially and recreationally fished from as far back as the early 1900s, white seabass catches on sportfishing boats dropped from 55,000 annual catches in 1950 to 3,500 in 1980. Changes to commercial fishing regulations combined with rehabilitation efforts by the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife have brought about a revival of a fish species that once appeared doomed, with volunteers like Griffin and Albright paving the way for a bright future for white seabass.

Aboard Albright's 44-foot Pacifica boat Kea Kai, the two will catch about 15 adult white seabass on just one of their three-day trips this season. Those fish will be kept alive in the boat's livewell before being transferred to a holding pen on the backside of Catalina Island in Cat Harbor.

Through the summer, Griffin and Albright will work to put somewhere between 50 and 150 white seabass in the holding pen. The fish are then transferred to San Diego Bay, where they will be transported by specialized trucks to the Leon Raymond Hubbard Jr. Marine Fish Hatchery in Carlsbad.

This past season, they managed to get 56 fish from rod-and-reel to hatchery.

“They're a delicate fish, and a lot has to go into keeping them alive through that journey,” Griffin said.

Once in the hatchery, the fish will breed, laying hundreds of thousands of eggs and producing thousands of baby white seabass. Since 1993, these infant seabass have been transported from Carlsbad to Newport Harbor, where Albright joined with the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute to create a holding pen for the juvenile fish that now floats out at one of the harbor's moorings.

“It just looks like a dock with a fence around it, and that's just to keep the dogs (sea lions) out,” Albright said, who adopted the pen's design from salmon pens in the Channel Islands.

On March 29, a fresh batch of 5,800 juvenile seabass was transferred from the Carlsbad hatchery to the Newport Harbor pen, aided by the Balboa Angling Club and more than a dozen volunteers. Albright, a past president of the club, said the group will monitor and feed the 4-inch fingerlings for about six months until they reach just under a foot in length. By September, the fish will be released along Newport Beach's coastline.

Before heading into open ocean, each juvenile is tagged in its cheek with a tiny barcode that can be scanned to show the fish's movement, diet, growth and survival rate. Anglers that catch white seabass are asked to save and freeze the heads of these fish, and drop them off at designated freezer locations around California harbors. So far, more than 1,800 hatchery-raised fish have been recovered, giving scientists insight into the fish's travel patterns.

Griffin recalled one fish that was released from San Diego Bay's hatchery pen, only to be caught in Morro Bay 12 years later, weighing in at nearly 50 pounds.

“People see the ocean as ‘going downhill,' but the way I look at it, it just takes more people and more conservation efforts to get it going in the right direction,” Griffin said. “Here's an example of something that's worked; we're getting bigger, healthier and better fishing every year.”

Newport Beach's white seabass pen is one of 13 operating in Southern California's harbors stretching from San Diego Bay to Santa Barbara. The state's hatchery program has released more than 1.8 million white seabass since its creation in 1986, and is expected to release its 2-millionth this summer.

Albright grew up fishing from his 8-foot sabot in Newport Harbor. The decision to put a few fish back in the water all of these years later was an easy one.

“I fished for barracuda, I fished from onshore, I've fished everywhere. I felt lucky to have an opportunity to be a part of this program,” Albright said.

For more information on the Balboa Angling Club's white seabass program, visit balboaanglingclub.org or call 949-673-6316.

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